Don’t Become a Psychiatric Patient - Make Good Choices!
“Make Good Choices!” I can’t remember what movie it was, but Jamie Lee Curtis is yelling this out the car window to her snarly teenage daughter.
Lately, several friends, some business owners and some not, have been making what for them are major choices, and the process is making them crazy. I decided to blog today on making choices because I think it is a difficult thing to do in American society. Frankly, as a business owner, you have enough stress in your life without stressing out over having to make choices.
1. Understand that whatever the choice you have to make, the worst outcome will not be as bad as what people in Darfur or the Congo are enduring at the moment. Having traveled the world, having friends that work in difficult locales around the globe, I am grateful these days for the kinds of choices I must deal with. I simply having nothing about which to complain.
2. Understand that this society naturally presents too many choices, lots of choices are not necessarily a good thing, and pare options down to a manageable size, say, two or three. Don’t apologize to yourself or others for the criteria you use to pare down. They are valid for you and need no justification.
3. Resolve to take action on the choice (and remember that taking no action is also a choice). You don’t need it hanging over your head. However, you can precede the choice with a cup of tea, a margarita (it’s Margarita Monday around here today), or whatever works for you.
4. Fear of making the “wrong” choice causes most of the stress. Most of the time, there is no really wrong choice–in the US, we have been conditioned to think that way. Spend some time with the fear, understand it, hark back to #1 above, then charge forward. One thing that causes fear is a bad experience with the same scenario in the past, like buying a computer. Take some time to understand why things went bad last time, resolve to do things differently this time, and see what that does for the fear.
5. Do a pro/con list if that helps. I am not a writer, but I think I go through this process in my head.
6. If you ask for advice, it’s only that. If you ask me for advice, I will give it, but it’s not gospel. Also, there is a thing as too much advice. Asking too many people usually means you want someone else to make the decision for you. Bad. Very bad. When you ask, be very specific with your request. The shorter, more concise the answer, the better for you. You might even use your pro/con list as a guide for what to ask.
7. Once you have gathered the information, make the decision.
8. Check in with yourself and see how the decision makes you feel. Terrified? Terrific? If terrified, then you probably want to spend some time figuring out why before you make the decision. Don’t seek out more advice at this point–you have everything you need to make the choice.
9. Once it has been made, don’t look back! You can never, ever, know what the result of the other choices would have been, so don’t waste your mental energy.
Now, go make good choices and good luck!
